A FURTHER 18 Covid-19 related deaths in Ireland have been confirmed this evening by health officials.

The deaths bring to 1,446 the number of people with the coronavirus who have sadly died in this country.

A further 219 cases have also been confirmed in a statement by the Department of Health, bringing the total number of cases here to 22,760. 

A total of 6,669 of those cases are associated with healthcare workers and the median age of all the confirmed cases is 49. 

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre reports that, as of midnight last night, the number of people who have been hospitalised from the virus is 2,954, representing 13% of the total number of who’ve been infected. 

Of those who have been hospitalised, 381 people had been admitted to ICU.

Of those for whom transmission status is known, community transmission accounts for 61% of cases, close contact accounts for 35%, travel abroad accounts for 3%. 

It is 10 weeks to the day since the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in the Republic of Ireland. 

In an update this morning, Minister for Health Simon Harris said there were now 72 people in ICU in Irish hospitals, down from 76 yesterday and 99 a week ago. 

“These are real people, fewer people getting very, very sick and going into our ICUs, that is a good thing,” the minister said.

“We were seeing 40 people a day being admitted to our hospitals with Covid-19, that number has now dropped to about 20 per day and we know the number of new cases per day has also dropped and that the rate of growth now has been 2% or less for about 12 days.”